 All Saints Day is a Holy Day of Obligation for American Catholics. It’s also one of my favorite feasts. I love that this solemnity for the many saints who have given their lives, either by dying for Christ or by living for Him comes at this time of year when the seasons are changing. The fact that we pause to remember our faith through memories of these many saints who have gone before us seems like a fitting way... Read more
I wrote about this earlier. Now it’s come to pass. How many of us agree? Read more
Evil begats evil. It also glorifies it. Dr Jack Kevorkian, the serial killer with a schtick, died the old-fashioned way, under medical care, fighting for his life. Before his death, he was lionized, promoted and considered a martyr. Sixty Minutes played a tape of Dr Kevorkian administering death-dealing drugs to Thomas Youk of Michigan on prime time tv, along with a favorable interview. HBO spent millions producing and promoting You Don’t Know Jack, a film honoring Kevorkian. Academy award winning... Read more
Euthanasia is an attack on life that no human authority can justify, because the life of an innocent person is an indispensable good. NO AUTHORITY CAN JUSTIFY EUTHANASIA Pope John Paul II Life of the elderly must be respected, Holy Father says in address to international conference “The respect that we owe the elderly compels me once again to raise my voice against all those practices of shortening life known as euthanasia…. Euthanasia is an attack on life that no... Read more
I may have a higher regard for the secret ballot than most Americans. To me, the secret ballot is the core freedom that allows Americans for vote freely. We didn’t always have a secret ballot in this country. It’s not in the Constitution. The secret ballot first came into use in the United States as a means to protect the votes of newly-freed slaves in the Reconstruction South. It passed into law in each of the states in turn, often... Read more
Every so often a post I write gets picked up by one of the 800 pound gorillas of the internet. It’s almost always a very simple post that took no effort to write and which has, at most, one idea without any nuances or development. I’m still quite new at this blogging stuff, so my opinions about it are forming, not formed. One of my forming, but not quite formed opinions is that if you want mega huge traffic numbers,... Read more
The United States Supreme Court has refused to hear a challenge of legalized abortion based on so-called Personhood statutes. I expected this. The Court basically ruled by refusing to rule on the question of personhood in Roe when it said that it need not consider the personhood of the unborn child. If they opened this up now, it would place the Court in the position of having to rule one way or the other on the question of whether or... Read more
I am going to delay moving forward with this series until after the election. I am concerned that some people might think that I am writing these posts to influence the outcome on November 6. In truth, Public Catholic is a response to what I experienced as something akin to a call to arms after President Obama signed the HHS Mandate. That mandate may turn out to be one of the turning points in my life. All I know for... Read more
I’ve written about other people’s miracle stories. Now, I’ll tell you about one of my own. I think most Christians have miracle stories. Mine is the fundamental Christian miracle, the accessible and universally available miracle. I am going to tell you about the day I stepped, blundered actually, from death to life. I lived about 17 years of my life in an anti-God mindset. There were reasons for this. To this day, I understand myself and accept that when I... Read more
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